santa anas

(written 10/28, revised this morning)

Praise You for this wind-

movement, in swirls and gusts.

This too shall pass.

It will not be my forever.

I wake up groggy: last night

shoved, as broken glass

inside me.

In daylight, I'm petrified

that my screaming seeped

from yesterday into morning,

a yellowing bruise,

a black ink smudge through a vellum sheet.

Self, we must forget.

Just for today, naturalize it,

rationalize it, make it

normal. It is not normal.

So just forget, shove it

in soul pockets somewhere

a corner.

Prayers for forgiveness

comes out lip service--

Heart does not want forgiveness just yet.

How would it help, just yet?

Praise the wind.

stirring things.

this wind

all angles, shifting.

So I smooth on, with a steady hand

calm eyes-

to expertly apply distance.

Peel away from reality's risk,

to love--but not too much.

Be present, show nothing,

want nothing, lose nothing.

The top layer, on which I care and

laugh and feel, most convincingly,

beneath which, if things go on this way

-my biggest fear-

there will be nothing.

Praise You for this wind

tearing away at my

amateur gilding.

I have to feel it. Let it soak

through my arms and up my elbows,

make me weak

let everyone see it

steep in it

wrap in it,

grieve.

JD Salinger

When I heard that Salinger had died (I heard it on the radio, at the end of a near-perfect day of work; I was on such a high, for no particular reason) I felt the kind of loss that is usually reserved for people you know, except it sort of felt more real even than that, for some reason. I guess because he has shaped so much of my thinking. I know I'm not alone in that feeling, not at all.

This is just one of many favorite things that he wrote:

"The part that stumps me, really stumps me, is that I can't see why anybody- unless he was a child, or an angel, or a lucky simpleton like the pilgrim- would even want to say the prayer to a Jesus who was the least bit different from the way he looks and sounds in the New Testament. My God! He's only the most intelligent man in the Bible, that's all! Who isn't he head and shoulders over? Who? Both Testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls- but, my God, who beside Jesus really knew which end was up? Nobody. Not Moses. Don't tell me Moses. He was a nice man, and he kept in beautiful touch with his God, and all that- but that's exactly the point. He had to keep in touch. Jesus realized there is no separation from God... Oh, my God, what a mind!" he said. "Who else, for example, would have kept his mouth shut when Pilate asked for an explanation? Not Solomon. Don't say Solomon. Solomon would have had a few pithy words for the occasion. I'm not sure Socrates wouldn't have, for that matter. Crito, or somebody, would have managed to pull him aside just long enough to get a couple of well-chosen words for the record. But most of all, above everything, who in the Bible besides Jesus knew- knew- that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff. Why don't you think of these things? I mean it, Franny, I'm being serious. When you don't see Jesus for exactly what he was you miss the whole point of the Jesus Prayer. If you don't understand Jesus, you can't understand his prayer- you don't get the prayer at all, you just get some kind of organized cant. Jesus was a supreme adept, by God, on a terribly important mission. This was no St. Francis, with enough time to knock out a few canticles, or to preach to the birds, or to do any of the other endearing things so close to Franny Glass's heart. I'm being serious now, God damn it. How can you miss seeing that? If God had wanted somebody with St. Francis's consistently winning personality for the job in the New Testament, he'd've picked him, you can be sure. As it was, he picked the best, the smartest, the most loving, the least sentimental, the most unimitative master he could possibly have picked. And when you miss seeing that, I swear to you, you're missing the whole point of the Jesus prayer. The Jesus Prayer has one aim, and one aim only. To endow the person who says it with Christ-Consciousness. Not to set up some little cozy, holier-than-thou trysting place with some sticky, adorable divine personage who'll take you in his arms and relieve you of all your duties and make all your nasty Weltschmerzen and Professor Tuppers go away and never come back. And by God, if you have intelligence enough to see that- and you do- and yet you refuse to see it, then you're misusing the prayer, you're using it to ask for a world full of dolls and saints and no Professor Tuppers."

--from Franny and Zooey

the impossibility of things

I am more myself these days

-myself, a reoccurring theme with me-

but I'm also you

when I smile this way

determined, amused and beyond words

at the state of every union,

at the impossibility of things.

Every time you smiled, I read stories

in your eyes, which, objectively

were rather muddy

in color and creed,

but I was not objective

and didn't think color

signified much, certainly nothing

having to do with clarity.

Every time your smile spoke things

the poet in me

heard beyond the words.

This kind of listening became

a dangerous occupation

to say the least.

See to me you knew everything--

and your high elevation became

a dangerous position,

impossible to keep.

Still just now I caught myself

amused at everything

aware of everything

seeing everything

holding all the colors of all the world

at a safe distance

and laughing.

And that's either

what I learned from you

or what you taught me.

broken street.

One time I ran away

got to the end of the broken street

(they've paved over since

now it's smooth, dark, neat)

then it was all cracks and gutter rivers.

I dodged each one, flying

free, and the whole time

barefoot, that whole minute

sprinting away. I was gone--

I was somebody.

I had a name I gave myself

not the one you gave to me

and I could sing, anytime

and you couldn't stop me.

and the moon danced for me,

sighing, 'oh, honey,'

'run while the night is still young.'

Hair streaming, in an undershirt and jeans

unpresentable--what would the neighbors think?

Feet burning, wheeling around corners

until running further

would have really changed things.

I walked back, the whole way

and sat on the porch

and cried,

and held the cold bruises

on the soles of me,

and the moon sighed with me.